


Just Exchange

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal and Yuki, just before Neal is posted to the Scanran border.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Exchange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talia_ae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talia_ae/gifts).



> My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,  
> By just exchange, one for the other giv'n.  
> I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;  
> There never was a better bargain driv'n.  
> \- Sir Philip Sidney

            When he’s due to leave, they meet in old Queen Lianne’s garden, which has not suffered from neglect in the years she has been gone; King Jonathan remembers the place his mother loved so much, even if he never visits, and it is given over to the younger members of the royal family and any nobles interested in spending a few moments there. It is little-used, because as the old queen’s favourite place it is not an appropriate site for romantic assignations or children’s play, and because it is too far away from the main areas of the palace for convenience.

 

            It takes Yuki three-quarters of an hour just to _find_ it.

 

            When she finally arrives, pink with exertion and suppressed irritation, Neal has the tact not to say ‘what took you so long’, but lacks the grace to apologise for choosing such an out-of-the-way place. Yuki ended up asking Haname for directions, which is not an experience she ever wishes to repeat: Haname’s bloodlines are impeccable, but her sense of direction is not, and her gentle propriety hides a ravening curiosity about the lives of others. Shinko is exempt, being of the imperial house, and all but married to Roald of Conté, and Haname is too withdrawn to interrogate those Tortallans that she knows; Yuki is her only victim.

 

            Irritated by all this, she eyes Neal with frustration and prepares to be annoyed with him. Before she can even open her mouth, Yuki sees in his suddenly panicked green eyes that he knows that she is displeased, and he speaks, hurried, garbled: “We leave for the border tomorrow.”

 

            The words sink between them, leaden.

 

            Neal takes a deep breath. “Please don’t be angry with me,” he says, and there is a raw, unhappy edge to his voice. “Please. I’m sorry, I should’ve realised this wouldn’t be the easiest of places for you to find – but – I like it. And it’s quiet.”

 

            Yuki’s heart breaks, just a little, to hear her insolent, witty, noisy Neal reduced to this. She knows what even Kel perhaps does not consciously realise: that Neal is afraid. He has never been quite as confident as he has seemed, always looking over his shoulder, hoping for his father’s approval, hoping to fill the gaping holes his brothers left, hoping that all his carefully crafted walls will not come down and reveal his inadequacies. Not a good enough healer, she knows he thinks, not a good enough knight, not good enough for anything: he sets himself up to like people he sees as better than himself, however false that view is. He admires Kel because she is so much the perfect knight, but he envies her too, envies her certain knowledge of her carefully honed skills. It is easy for him to believe that he is not good enough for her.

 

            Yuki steps forward. “I am not angry,” she tells him, and her words come out more frightened than she wanted them to.

 

            Neal offers her a small, shaking smile. “No. Of course.” He reaches out and gently tucks a fine strand of her hair behind her ear; the gesture is an excuse to touch her, his fingers cool and delicate on her skin, and her eyes fall shut, her face tilting into his touch. His hand falls reluctantly, and she feels the loss of the connection as if she has lost part of herself. She cannot begin to imagine how it will be when he is gone.

 

            “Do you know where you will be sent?” Yuki asks, when the silence hurts too much.

 

            Neal’s shake of the head is hardly more than an almost involuntary jerk; he looks paralysed, staring down at her in her suddenly inappropriately bright pink dress (Lalasa’s latest creation – Yuki helped in the design of this one, advised on Yamani motifs and styles that could be adapted to fit the hybrid style Shinko is making so fashionable; she was so proud of it until this moment). “I... not until I get there, not the specific place. I’ll write to you. If you wish it.”  


            It is not proper for an unmarried woman, Tortallan or Yamani, to be receiving letters from a man who is not her husband, or at least her fiancé, and although Neal still wears her shukusen in his belt they have come to no further agreement. Yuki’s heart stops but her mind does not. “There is very little that I wish for more.”

 

            The spark in Neal’s eyes tells her he has picked up on her true meaning. She wants him to write to her, but she would prefer to have him safe with her; she would prefer that there was no war at all.  He holds his hands out to her, broad calloused palms facing upwards, and for a moment she just looks at them. Yukimi noh Daiomoru flirts within careful boundaries, using words and looks, not gestures, and she is in wholly unfamiliar territory.

 

            Then she reminds herself that this is wartime, and she must take what she wants before it is gone, and she puts her hands into Neal’s. She feels... vulnerable. It is not pleasant.

 

            Yuki consoles herself with the knowledge that Neal, looming over her, her hands dwarfed in his, looks almost more nervous than she does.

 

            “I...” Neal takes a deep breath, and squeezes her hands gently. “I know I haven’t... spoken. About marriage. And I don’t intend to speak now, exactly. It wouldn’t be fair to go to war and leave you behind, tied to a knight who might be dead tomorrow. So.” He hooks something out of his pocket, something small and oval on a long gold chain that Yuki does not recognise. “I have something of yours. This is something of mine, for you. It’s... the Queenscove seal, the symbol of personal authority. It – traditionally, it’s the property of the oldest son, and they wear it around their neck. I’ve never worn it, but... It is mine, and everyone will know it, at least, everyone here in Corus or at Queenscove. And – more than that. As the symbol of personal authority, it grants you everything that’s mine if something happens to me. That’s not much – the Queenscove lands would pass to my sister and her children, for example – but... in the event of... my death, everything that’s mine would be yours.”

 

            Yuki is wordless.

 

            Neal’s hands tremble around hers, the chain and the seal intermixed with their fingers. “It’s a very visible commitment. I wouldn’t expect you to wear it, or –“

 

            “No,” Yuki says firmly, disentangles the chain from his fingers, and slips it over her neck. The seal falls low between her breasts, small and glinting. “I will wear it _always_.”

 

            Neal’s face lights up, and he sweeps her into his arms. He is crushing her slightly, his face pressed into the junction of her shoulder and neck, and she wraps her arms tightly around him and shuts her eyes and inhales the faint Nealish scent of cedar soap, medicine and sweat, because even though this is the first chance she has ever had to hold him it may well be the last. Yuki knows how to make the most of what she has.

 

            “Kiss me,” she says suddenly, following that thought as far as she dares.

 

            “What?” Neal says blankly, and when he meets her eyes he seems slightly dazed, and his eyes are shining with unshed tears.

 

            She scowls at him to ward off her own tears. “If you are going away, I want a kiss.”

 

            Neal smiles shakily. “ _Oh_.”           

 

            “Oh indeed,” she snaps, and leans up to him; he leans down, and cups her face gently in one of his long-fingered hands, pressing his lips to hers lightly, then letting his hands fall to her waist and draw her close (Yuki cannot _breathe_ for excitement and uncertainty and the heartbreaking fear that she’ll never do this again) while he kisses her again, properly this time, confidently, like a man who knows what she wants and wants to give it to her.

 

            How he knows when she has hardly any idea isn’t something Yuki proposes to investigate. It’s enough that he’s holding her now, and that the chain slowly warming on her skin is a promise that, if he lives, he will do so again.

 

            Yuki swallows. If she were Tortallan she would screw up her eyes and let her misery show: instead her face goes totally, horribly blank and the only sign of what she’s feeling is the way her hands are gripping handfuls of Neal’s tunic. “I love you. If you get killed, I will bring you back _just_ so I can kill you myself, am I _perfectly_ clear?”

 

            “Clear as crystal, my terrifying beloved,” Neal assures her, and he is crying openly now, but smiling too.

 

            Yuki throws all her learned control to the four winds and flings her arms around Neal’s neck and lets him hold her again, his body warm and solid against hers. “You _will_ write to me,” she says.

 

            “Absolutely,” Neal agrees.

 

            “And I _will_ come and see you off.”

 

            “I’d love that.”

 

            “And when you come back we _are_ getting married.”

 

            “I plan on it.”

 

            “ _No arguments_.”

 

            Neal kisses the top of her head, almost laughing. “None whatever, love.”

 

            “ _Good_ ,” Yuki says fiercely, and holds him tighter.

 

***

 

            The last of the late summer sunshine is pouring down on Yuki as she runs out of arrows, and she lays her bow down and walks up to the target. When she walks back with fistfuls of arrows, she finds that Buriram Tourakom, commander of the Queen’s Riders, has joined her on the ranges. The Riders are mustering again, gathering their resources and the year’s recruits to ride north in the final assault on Maggur Rathhausak.

 

            “Good morning, commander,” Yuki says politely.

 

            Buri leans back against the wall and smiles, squinting against the sunshine. “Lady Yukimi. No longer commander, as a matter of fact; I’ve resigned my commission.”

 

            “Indeed?” Yuki says, unable to think why this has anything at all to do with her, but prepared to accept that she is somehow involved.

 

            “I’m riding north to find that scapegrace fiancé of mine.” Buri grins a shark’s grin. “A little bird with griffin feathers tells me you might be interested in a similar journey.”

 

            Yuki’s eyes narrow. _Kel_. How has Kel managed to find time, between a war, a camp full of refugees, and a desperate rescue mission, to facilitate her friends’ romantic lives? She decides that further practice today is doomed, lays her arrows down, and unstrings her bow, thinking. It does not matter how Kel has managed to find the time: simply that she has done.

 

            The seal around her neck clinks softly on the end of its chain, and Yuki makes her choice. It is probably not one of which either Shinko or Haname will approve, and Yuki cannot even begin to imagine what her mother would think. She does not care.

 

            “Tell me, Lady Buriram. How long does it take to travel to the north?”

 

            Buri smiles. “Not nearly as long as you think, Lady Yukimi. Not that long at all.”    


End file.
